Linked List: February 25, 2026

Wednesday, 25 February 2026

‘H-Bomb: A Frank Lloyd Wright Typographic Mystery’ 

When re-hanging signage, “Mind your P’s and Q’s” ought to be “Mind your H’s and S’s”.

Terry Godier: ‘Phantom Obligation’ 

Terry Godier, in a thoughtful essay on the design of RSS feed readers:

There’s a particular kind of guilt that visits me when I open my feed reader after a few days away. It’s not the guilt of having done something wrong, exactly. It’s more like the feeling of walking into a room where people have been waiting for you, except when you look around, the room is empty. There’s no one there. There never was.

I’ve been thinking about this feeling for a long time. Longer than I probably should, given that it concerns something as mundane as reading articles on the internet. But I’ve come to believe that these small, repeated experiences shape us more than we like to admit.

So let me start with a question that’s been nagging at me: why do RSS readers look like email clients?

There are good answers to that question, and for 20-some years I’ve used a feed reader — NetNewsWire — that looks like an email client. (To be honest, I wish my email client looked and worked more like NetNewsWire.) But the bigger question Godier is asking is why don’t more feed readers try something fundamentally different?

He’s answered his own question with Current, a new feed reader for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Bill Gates Apologizes to Foundation Staff Over Epstein Ties 

Emily Glazer, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

The billionaire said he met with Epstein starting in 2011, years after Epstein had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution. Gates said he was aware of some “18-month thing” that had limited Epstein’s travel but said he didn’t properly check his background. Gates said he continued meeting with Epstein even after his then-wife Melinda French Gates expressed concerns in 2013.

“Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse in terms of not only his crimes in the past, but now it’s clear there was ongoing bad behavior,” Gates told staff. Speaking of his ex-wife, he added: “To give her credit, she was always kind of skeptical about the Epstein thing.”

“Kind of” is doing a lot of work there.

Greg Knauss: ‘Lose Myself’ 

Greg Knauss:

People will argue that speaking English to LLMs is just another level of abstraction away from the physics of how the machine actually works. And while that’s technically true — the worst kind of true — it also misses the point. Industrialization fundamentally changes things, by quantum degrees. A Ding Dong from a factory is not the same thing as a gâteau au chocolat et crème chantilly from a baker which is not the same thing as cramming chunks of chocolate and scoops of whipped cream directly into your mouth while standing in front of the fridge at 2:00am. The level of care, of personalization, of intimacy — both given and taken — changes its nature. Digging a trench is a very different thing than telling someone to dig a trench. Assembling a clock is a very different thing than asking Siri for the time.

Splendid little essay.

The Talk Show: ‘Serious Opinionators’ 

Adam Engst returns to the show to talk, in detail, about certain of the UI changes in iOS 26 and Apple’s version 26 OSes overall. In particular, the new Unified view in the Phone app, and the Filter pop-up menu in both the Phone and Messages apps. Also: a shoutout to Balloon Help.

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Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra’s Privacy Display 

Ben Schoon, writing for 9to5 Google:

When activated, Privacy Display changes how the pixels in your display emit light, making it harder or near-impossible to view the display at an off-angle. At its default setting, it definitely works, but the contents of the display are visible at less-sharp angles. Samsung has a “maximum” setting that takes this up a notch, and that setting makes it even harder to see the contents and narrows the field-of-view even further. [...]

A bigger deal, though, is that Samsung has built Privacy Display with the ability to only apply to small portions of the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s display. Specifically, it can hide your notification pop-ups. This part really impressed me, as Privacy Display is able to specifically hide only that singular portion of the display, and it does so nearly perfectly. The masking around the notification ensures the content behind isn’t affected, and the effect works incredibly well.

Neat feature, especially the way you can toggle it when needed, set it to auto-enable for specific apps, and/or work only for notifications.

See also: Allison Johnson at The Verge. Also worth noting that the Galaxy S26 Ultra starts at $1,300; the iPhone 17 Max starts at $1,200.

Major Candy Brands Are Switching From Actual Chocolate to ‘Chocolatey Candy’ (Read: Brown Candle Wax) 

Jim Vorel, writing just yesterday for Jezebel:

It can be hard to know what exactly to call the substances that are now found coating many major candy bars such as Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, Almond Joy, Mr. Goodbar or Rolos. Food scientists refer to it as “compound chocolate” coating, because it’s made from actual cocoa powder, but replaces the more expensive source of fat (cocoa butter) with cheaper, lower-quality vegetable fats. When Hershey brands such as Mr. Goodbar or Almond Joy made the switch in recent years, their labels subtly changed from claiming that they were “milk chocolate,” to “chocolate candy,” which strikes me as particularly insidious phrasing. A more obvious indicator is another word that many companies use: “Chocolatey” coating. Wondering how much this scourge had infiltrated my own home, I took a look moments ago at several packages of Girl Scout Cookies, only to find the inevitable: Both my Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties are also made with compound chocolate, rather than the real thing. I can hardly pretend to be surprised. Even in candies that continue to use real chocolate, meanwhile, cost-cutting measures have sometimes been employed, such as the milk chocolate coating of a Snickers bar becoming slightly thinner over time. Some products even mix real chocolate and compound chocolate in a single cookie or candy.

I Am Nothing if Not a Man of Science 

After writing a few days ago about the current brouhaha over the severe decline in the edibility of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and linking to Trader Joe’s shade-throwing description of their own, I of course had to try theirs. In the name of science, I bought both the milk and dark chocolate variants.

Verdict: Excellent. Both chocolates taste like chocolate, not candle wax, and the peanut butter is creamy and smooth — you know, like peanut butter. Not the sand-and-sawdust mix that Hershey fills Reese’s cups with now.